Propagation Under Pressure

Exploring the Growth of the Iraqw People in Colonial and Post-Colonial Times

by Julia Daniel

Parks and Peoples: Dilemmas of Protected Area Conservation in

P r o f e s s o r Bill Durham and Susan Charnley

Sophomore College 2014

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A Brief History of the Iraqw People and Land

The Iraqw people are agropastoralists living on the Mbulu Plateau above the

Great Rift escarpment in northern (Bartul 1969: 18). Unlike the surrounding Bantu and , the Iraqw are a Cushitic-speaking people with a unique culture and history. Their relationship to the land also differs profoundly from neighboring groups’, due to both traditional Iraqw cultural values and the unusual historical interactions between the native Iraqw and European colonizers and missionaries.

The Iraqw are a southern Cushitic group, tracing their roots back two millennia to Yemen, Jordan, and Ethiopia (Langay 2014). As Cushites, their lighter skin, facial structure, and language set them apart from their Bantu and Nilotic neighbors. According to local oral tradition, the Iraqw people came south via and arrived in the Serengeti, in northwestern

Tanzania. They were pushed east, however, first by the pastoralist Sukuma of the Serengeti to the Ngorongoro highlands, and then by the

Ngorongoro Datoga (also spelled Datooga) to the Mbulu area (Langay 2014). During this time, the Iraqw people established themselves at sites such as , a once-thriving agricultural settlement with complex irrigation and intercropping systems whose stone ruins Figure 1: Mbulu Highlands and Iraqw settlement areas 3 remain today. There is evidence that the Iraqw settled in the Kainam area, southeast of the modern town of Mbulu, by the beginning of the 18th century (Lawi 1999a: 2).

The Iraqw call this area Iraqw’ar Da/aw, meaning the ‘Iraqw land of the east’, and they consider this 180-km2 area their modern homeland (Widgren 2004: 94).

The Iraqw had a religious tradition strongly tied to their land use practices.

The spirit world, made up of the earth-based male deity neetlaang’w, the sun-based female deity looa, and human ancestral spirits called gi’i, had an important role in maintaining the balance of the ecosystem. Ritually offensive events such as miscarriages or lightning strikes could anger these deities and cause water shortages and forest shrinkage, indicating the close coupling of culture with the well-being of the local environment (Lawi 1999a: 5). Furthermore, ritual and land use intersected in the Iraqw method of peaceful geographic expansion, wherein ‘magical’ herbal rites were performed at new or existing boundaries to claim and protect the area. While the Iraqw rarely resorted to violence except in cases of self- Figure 2: Traditional Iraqw homes defense, their methods of expansion were quite effective because their ‘witchcraft’ was in fact widely feared among neighboring ethnic groups (Anderson 1999: 131).

At the turn of the 20th century, the Iraqw practiced intensive subsistence agropastoralism in this area; they lived in permanent settlements where they relied 4 both on livestock and on intercropped subsistence cultivation. In addition, they depended on forests for firewood, building material, honey, surplus grazing area, and more. As both cattle-herding pastoralists and permanently settled agriculturalists in a subsistence economy, the Iraqw measured wealth in terms of children and land area ownership (Anderson 1999: 126). Since at least the mid- nineteenth century, population growth has been a challenge within Iraqw’ar Da/aw, as it has caused increasing agricultural intensification and placed pressure on herding areas outside of the core homeland (Lawi 1999a: 13). By the turn of the century, the Iraqw had begun to settle slightly beyond the traditional borders of

Iraqw’ar Da/aw (Anderson 1999: 127).

The first European presence arrived in Mbulu at this time, when German colonialists gained control of the region in 1906. Christian missionaries came shortly thereafter, and the British replaced the Germans as district rulers in 1916

(Lawi 1999b: 284). Until the 1930s, the Europeans showed little interest in the daily lives of the local people, but by the mid-1930s and particularly following World War

II the colonial administration began to pursue campaigns aiming to modernize natural resource management and use. These campaigns were founded on the colonial officials’ ideas about environment and development and regularly opposed traditional Iraqw views. Conflicts between local and colonial interests and between

European and Iraqw culture were thus inevitable (Lawi 1999a: 11).

The modernization campaigns initially focused on forest management and conservation. The British quickly declared the Nou forest, the largest and most economically important forest bordering Iraqw’ar Da/aw, a forest reserve in 1921 5

(Lawi 1999a: 12). The forest was very important as a home for threatened tree species and unique avifauna, and erosion and grazing due to human use led to silting and stream bank erosion, threatening the Nou forest’s status as an essential water source for local people (FARM Africa 2014: 3). More importantly to the British, however, the Nou was attractive for its potential for timber and for its status as a water source for emerging European settlements such as Kiru (Lawi 1999b: 298).

Beginning in the 1920s, the Iraqw were thus barred from entering the forest; while this policy was incompletely enforced, its harmful effects on local livelihoods were real. By the 1950s, an Indian private sawing company possessed permits to operate in the Nou forest, but no locals were employed there and only a tiny fraction of the timber was sold locally for Iraqw use (Lawi 1999a: 14).

Sources: Widgren Iraqw Tanzanian Iraqw Tanzanian 2004, NBS 2014 population population increase increase 1900 18,000 4 million 1948 107,600 7.5 million +498% +87% 1957 133,494 9.1 million +24% +21% 2000 0.6 million 35 million +349% +285% Net change +3429% +775%

The British colonial period witnessed both a dramatic increase in Iraqw population and a large expansion in Iraqw land holdings beyond Iraqw’ar Da/aw. At the same time, however, the neighboring Datoga and Maasai, reeling from the effects of rinderpest and European control, struggled to maintain access to their pre- colonial land holdings (Widgren 2004: 101). Given that the Iraqw traditionally measure wealth in population and land holdings, it would seem that they have, by their own measures, been relatively successful during colonial times and beyond. 6

This paper aims to evaluate this expansion and determine why it occurred and whether it truly represents Iraqw prosperity under pressure, or simply propagation.

Explanations for Iraqw Expansion

As discussed above, the Iraqw have expanded in population and land holdings over the past century to a much greater degree than neighboring ethnic groups or Tanzania’s average. There are many possible explanations for this unusual growth pattern in the presence of outside colonial and postcolonial forces.

The simplest explanation would be that the Iraqw simply followed their natural growth trajectory as a population, and their expansion was unrelated to the advent of colonialism in the Mbulu area. This explanation is also one of the simplest to reject, however; population estimates for 1900 estimate the Iraqw population at around 18,000, and land holdings at this time followed roughly the original outline of Iraqw’ar

Da/aw (Windgren 2004: 95). By the 1930s, however, out-migration had begun in earnest from Iraqw’ar

Da/aw, such that the population within the homeland area remained constant while the Iraqw population as a whole exploded; by 1948 the Iraqw population had grown roughly 500% - clearly rates which far exceeded pre-colonial growth (Windgren 2004: 97). Figure 3: Expansion of intensive agriculture in Iraqw'ar Da/aw By the 1960s, the Iraqw had dispersed at least 60 miles from Kainam in the northern direction (Bartul 1969: 21). 7

There are three main hypotheses which could explain the proliferation of the

Iraqw people since European arrival. The first, the Direct Benefit Hypothesis, states that European activities in the Mbulu area directly benefitted the Iraqw people, allowing them to expand in population and land holdings due to their own newfound wealth and success. The second, the Cultural Resilience Hypothesis, suggests that the Iraqw did not directly benefit from European actions, but that their religious, cultural, and agropastoralist traditions afforded them certain advantages which neighboring ethnic groups lacked, and thus the Iraqw were able to expand their territory and population at the expense of neighboring ethnic groups simply because they were better-suited to manage external challenges. Finally, the Forced

Expansion Hypothesis states that Iraqw expansion does not indicate success at all; instead, it is a symptom of conditions within the Iraqw homeland becoming unlivable due to colonial actions. These hypotheses, presented in order of decreasing favor toward colonial rule, may each have some aspects of truth about them; it is thus entirely possible that an accurate explanation of the Iraqw experience will combine them in some way.

The Direct Benefit Hypothesis

As previously discussed, the Iraqw traditional measures of wealth reflect their blended agropastoralist culture. In settled agrarian communities, where land is livelihood, larger holdings and larger families to tend to them indicate larger wealth.

Similarly, pastoralist communities such as the Maasai measure wealth through herd size (Meikuaya 2012: 32). For the Iraqw, population, land holdings, and herd size all 8 factor into wealth, and the simplest interpretation of their expansion over the past century is simply that colonialism directly benefitted them, and thus they became vastly wealthier by their own measurements.

The case of the Nou forest is a pertinent illustration to the contrary. The

Iraqw economy and livelihood relied on many products and services from the forest, including timber, game meat, honey, thatch grass, and pasture for animals. Although enforcement was not completely effective, the inhabitants of Iraqw’ar Da/aw were largely barred from using these resources following the forest’s reservation in 1921

(Lawi 1999b: 299). In 1925, D.K.S. Grant, a British official, wrote that “a check had at last been placed on the frightful devastation of forests by the indigenous tribes, that especially in the fertile highlands had been practised for centuries with impunity”

(Lawi 1999a: 12). While the British were thus free over the following decades to commence large-scale timber operations and use the Nou water to feed their own growing settlements, the Iraqw were forced to compensate for their lost resources by further intensifying agriculture within the homeland area. A colonial development program aimed to provide an alternate source of wood by providing saplings for the locals to cultivate on their land. To the British, this system would be a recreation of European systems of intermingled croplands, pastures, and small woodlands; to the Iraqw, this was an impossible demand, as intensive food cultivation already barely sufficed for subsistence (Lawi 1999a: 12-15). This example is thus grounds to soundly reject the Direct Benefit Hypothesis that colonial activities promoted the wealth of the Iraqw people.

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The Cultural Resilience Hypothesis

While colonial actions did not directly support Iraqw wealth per se, it is possible that the unique pattern of Iraqw expansion can be attributed to unique aspects of their culture or way of life which helped them survive and grow under conditions where their neighbors could not. As culture is a complex set of behaviors, the Cultural Resilience Hypothesis must take into account both the agropastoralist lifestyle and Iraqw-specific customs around interpersonal relations in assessing whether culture gave the Iraqw people an advantage in facing the challenges of colonialism.

There is evidence that the unique

Iraqw culture with its Cushitic origins caused colonial rulers to favor the Iraqw over other local ethnic groups such as the Datoga. In comparing Iraqw and Datoga perceptions among the British, Ole Bjørn Rekdal writes,

“While Iraqw leaders engaged in dialogue with the colonialists, the Datooga sought to keep the new rulers at a distance. … Their characterizations of Iraqw and Datooga were Figure 4: Iraqw father, Musa, and child soon fixed in images of docile and peaceful agropastoralists and hostile and aggressive pastoralists” (Anderson 1999: 128). It is possible that these practices, along with the Iraqw tradition of non-violence, placed them in some sort of 10 favorable position in the eyes of the British, who may have subjected them to more accommodating policies or at least taken their grievances into consideration.

More likely, however, is the inherent degree of compatibility between agropastoralism and British visions for the region, which strongly disfavored the nomadic pastoralist lifestyle. Pastoralists such as the Maasai and Datoga were devastated by rinderpest in the early colonial years, as they relied primarily on cattle for survival; the Iraqw could support themselves through the epidemic due to their long-term agriculture, and were thus stronger during the epidemic and the following decades of colonization (Widgren 2004: 73). National policies have consistently favored settled agriculture: agriculturalists were seen as easier to govern; nomadic lifestyles were incompatible with health, economic, and education

goals; and state policies have subsidized

farmers, confiscated cattle and infringed

on traditional grazing lands (Anderson

1999: 127). While neighboring Maasai

and Datoga struggled to accommodate

Figure 5: Iraqw cultivated land these changes, and their populations were pushed into small areas, the Iraqw found themselves with room to expand into land previously inhabited by their more warlike neighbors (Widgren 2004: 101). The above evidence thus tentatively supports the Cultural Resilience Hypothesis; in both their interpersonal relations with colonial rulers and in their agropastoralist lifestyle, the Iraqw claimed certain 11 inherent cultural advantages which supported their resilience and expansion when faced with conditions which greatly challenged their neighbors.

The Forced Expansion Hypothesis

The rejection of the Direct Benefit Hypothesis illuminates certain concerns with the treatment of the Iraqw under colonial rule. The Forced Expansion

Hypothesis proposes that the Iraqw expansion is indicative of struggles to subsist within Iraqw’ar Da/aw – struggles directly caused by colonial policies. As discussed under the Direct Benefit Hypothesis, conservation policies in the Nou forest reserve prevented the Iraqw from accessing the forest resources. Of particular importance was the usage ban on grazing cattle within the forest, which traditionally was an essential method of easing grazing pressure on pastures. After 1921, the Iraqw were forced to graze their cattle on settled land, which was already under pressure from intensive subsistence farming; this discouraged the Iraqw from expanding their herds. Those who wished to expand their herds for increased resource security were thus forced out of Iraqw’ar Da/aw; the tendency for emigrants to dramatically expand their herds within the first few years of leaving the Kainam area illustrates this phenomenon (Lawi 1999a: 13-15). In this case, expansion is symptomatic of a problem directly brought on by the colonial government, which lends support to the

Forced Expansion Hypothesis as a component of Iraqw propagation.

Looking Forward 12

The above examination of the reasons behind Iraqw expansion in the presence of colonial conservation shows the extent to which propagation no longer equaled prosperity for the Iraqw during colonial times. Evidence clearly refutes the

Direct Benefit Hypothesis; the Iraqw people received few, if any, of the perks of

British conservation efforts. A more likely explanation for the spread of the Iraqw combines the Cultural Resilience Hypothesis and the Forced Expansion Hypothesis.

Land and population pressure coupled with restricted access to resources certainly forced many Iraqw to leave the Iraqw’ar Da/aw homeland area; at the same time, however, this population growth and emigration was enabled by the shrinking of

Datoga and Maasai control over the surrounding areas, which before colonialism had kept Iraqw growth in check (Lawi 1999a: 15). Thus, Iraqw propagation is also reflective of certain cultural advantages and privileges they possessed relative to other ethnic groups.

While the discussion above attempts to capture the major themes and issues of the Iraqw experience during the colonial period, other aspects remain untouched here and merit further exploration. While the Iraqw did experience dramatic population growth during the 20th century, further work is needed to determine the extent to which intermarriage and assimilation, particularly with Datoga, have affected Iraqw cultural identity and population measurements. It is also essential to examine the more recent history of the Iraqw people in terms of their integration into the modern economy, their attainment of 21st-century development goals, and their current relationships to local protected areas, including the Nou forest,

Ngorongoro Conservation Area, and Lake Manyara National Park. The Iraqw offer 13 lessons on traditional cultural behaviors adapted to a Eurocentric world, but their future prosperity remains to be determined.

Figure 6: Modern Karatu town 14

Acknowledgements

Sincere thanks are due first to Professor Bill Durham and Susan Charnley for their expertise, informative lectures, thought-provoking discussions, and devotion to the success of this Sophomore College program; to Clementine Jacoby and Eric

Mattson for their guidance, conversation, and support throughout the course; to

Joseph Langay for his selfless efforts to procure both historical information on the

Iraqw people and misplaced travel documents; to Musa and Pascaline Wambulu for showing the class into their home and answering questions; to Joyful, Hashim,

Clemence, Lesikar, Jackson, Aron, and Joseph again for their friendly, patient service and their vast knowledge of Tanzanian wildlife; and to the Stanford Alumni

Association and Stanford Travel-Study for providing the resources to make this experience possible.

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Works Cited

Anderson, David, and Vigdis Broch-Due. The Poor Are Not Us : Poverty & Pastoralism In Eastern Africa. Oxford: James Currey , 1999. Chapter 6.

Bartul, John C. Environmental evaluation and risk adjustment in eastern Africa. Edited by James L. Newman; Contributions by John C. Bartul, Robert Greenstein and Garry Thomas. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University, Program of Eastern African Studies, 1969.

FARM Africa - SOS Sahel. "The Nou Joint Forest Management Project." 2014. Web. Accessed 4 Sept. 2014. .

Langay, Joseph. Personal Interview. 12 September 2014.

Lawi, Yusufu Qwaray. The Human Exploitation of Local Environmental Variations On the Mbulu Highlands, Northern Tanzania, 1920s-1950s. Boston, MA: African Studies Center, Boston University, 1999a.

Lawi, Yusufu Qwaray. Where Physical and Ideological Landscapes Meet: Landscape Use and Ecological Knowledge in Iraqw, Northern Tanzania, 1920s-1950s. The International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 32, No. 2/3, 1999b. http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/220343.pdf?acceptTC=true&jpdConfir m=true

Meikyaua, Wilson and Jackson Ntirkana. The Last Maasai Warriors. Me to We: Toronto, 2012.

Tanzanian National Bureau of Statistics. Statistics for Development. Web. 10 Sept. 2014. .

Widgren, Mats and John E.G. Sutton, ed. Islands of intensive agriculture in Eastern Africa: past & present. Oxford : James Currey, 2004.

Cover photo: Iraqw settlement and cultivation area outside of Karatu, northern Tanzania.